"Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 2)

don't see many people this early in the season."
I laughed. "Does that mean we might be able to buy a little
glass without mortgaging our home?"
"Look at that now," Hagan said, smiling helplessly. "I've
thrown away any advantage I might have had in the transac-
tion. Rose, that's my wife, says I never learn. Still, let's sit
down and talk it over," He pointed at the rubble wall then
glanced doubtfully, at Selina's immaculate blue skirt. "Wait till
I fetch a rug from the house." Hagan limped quickly into the
cottage, closing the door behind him.
"Perhaps it wasn't such a marvelous idea to come up here,"
I whispered to Selina, "but you might at least be pleasant to
the man. I think I can smell a bargain."
"Some hope," she said with deliberate coarseness. "Surely
even you must have noticed that ancient dress his.wife is
wearing? He won't give much away to strangers."
"Was that his wife?"
"Of course that was his wife."
"Well, well," I said, surprised. "Anyway, try to be civil with
him. I don't want to be embarrassed."
Selina snorted, but she smiled whitely when Hagan reap-
peared and I relaxed a little. Strange how a man can love a
woman and yet at the same time pray for her to fall under a
train.
Hagan spread a tartan blanket on the wall and we sat down,
feeling slightly self-conscious at having been translated from
our city-oriented lives into a rural tableau. On the distant slate
of the Loch, beyond the watchful frames of slow glass, a
slow-moving steamer drew a white line towards the south.
The boisterous mountain air seemed almost to invade our
lungs, giving us more oxygen than we required.
"Some of the glass farmers around here," Hagan began,
"give strangers, such as yourselves, a sales talk. about how
beautiful the autumn is in this part of Argyll. Or it might be
the spring, or the winter. I don't do thatany fool knows that
a place which doesn't look right in summer never looks right.
What do you say?"
I nodded compliantly.
"I want you just to take a good look out towards Mull,
Mr...."
"Garland."
"... Garland. That's what you're buying if you buy my
glass, and it never looks better than it does at this minute. The
glass is in perfect phase, none of it is less than ten years thick
and a four-foot window will cost you two hundred
pounds."
"Two hundred!" Selina was shocked. "That's as much as
they charge at the Scenedow shop in Bond Street."
Hagan smiled patiently, then looked closely at me to see if
I knew enough about slow glass to appreciate what he had